Jamie Oliver says men ‘f***ing hated’ him after The Naked Chef – and he was even PUNCHED

Jamie Oliver says men ‘f***ing hated’ him after The Naked Chef – and he was even PUNCHED

JAMIE OLIVER admitted he was punched and he believes men “hated” him during his time recording The Naked Chef.

PUBLISHED: 15:29, Mon, Aug 6, 2018
| UPDATED: 15:29, Mon, Aug 6, 2018

0

Jamie Oliver said he was "hated" by men across the country (Image: GETTY)

Jamie Oliver said he was "hated" by men across the country in the early years of his career.

The TV chef and restaurateur, who rose to fame with his first series The Naked Chef in 1999, said: "I didn't realise it was political at the time, but 20 years ago women, en masse, were going to work...

"Women and men, husbands, boyfriends were coming home from work, they'd sit down at six o'clock and go, 'ahh, f***ing tired', and men across Britain would look at their wives would go, 'what's for dinner?'

"And they weren't having it. And rightfully so. They had both done a 12-hour day, their feet both hurt, they're both contributing to the rent - so I didn't know it because I was too young and stupid, and I was just enjoying life way too much - but women around Britain made me succeed."

Related articles

And then that's why, if you look back in the papers and study it, men hated me for two years, and I got chased and punched a few times, I had loads of abuse. Men f***ing hated me.

Jamie Oliver

Oliver added: "When The Naked Chef was on telly, I look about one year old - I'm almost like a foetus, you know? So for the girls around the country, old and young, when their husbands said 'what's for dinner?', they said, 'see that boy, he's 23 years old, if he could cook for his missus, and all his friends, look what he's cooking, it's simple, look he's getting his hand in there' and they went 'go on."'

Oliver continued: "And then that's why, if you look back in the papers and study it, men hated me for two years, and I got chased and punched a few times, I had loads of abuse. Men f***ing hated me.

"If I did a demonstration in front of two-and-a-half thousand people, and I used to do it four times a day, for a week, so 40,000 people... It was all women and gay men.

"Men are very simple, all they need is a hug and they need food; that's really all they need in life, right?"

Jamie Oliver on The Naked Chef in 2002 (Image: GETTY)

The TV star added: "When men stopped thinking of me as the competition, as a threat, when they realised if I cooked for my wife, for my girlfriend, she loves me a little bit more, then in turn - after about two-and-a-half years - men would stop wanting to punch me.

"I would do a demonstration in front of two-and-a-half thousand people and, over the years, now it's 50/50."

The interview comes after the family-man chef described being forced to close his restaurants as a “dark time” for him and his family.

The celebrity chef admitted he struggled to cope emotionally with losing 12 of the 37 UK branches of his cash-strapped Jamie’s Italian chain, which were shut down in a rescue deal with creditors.

The TV chef and restaurateur (Image: GETTY )

“I’m very proud of having survived 10 years,” said Jamie, 43, who also revealed he has been working evenings and weekends since the restaurant group encountered problems last October.

“Restaurant years are like dog years, so 10 years is a very long time. It’s been a dark time… [there’s been] not-so-nice darkness,” he added.

In February, court documents showed Jamie’s Italian, which opened its first branch in Oxford in 2008, had debts of £71.5million. Of that, £41.3million was owed to the taxman, landlords, suppliers and others. Staff were owed £2.2million and the rest was made up of overdrafts and loans.

“Ten years ago we stormed in and had an unbelievable response and queues,” Jamie told Women’s Weekly. For the last five years the market has just become really competitive and the environment has changed. There’s tough competition.”

The crisis followed a series of business setbacks for Jamie who, by his own admission, has failed in up to 40 per cent of his ventures and lost £90million since 2014.

In 2015 he also shut the last branch of his cookery shop chain Recipease.

In 2017, he closed the last of his four British-themed Union Jacks restaurants and his food magazine, Jamie, stopped publishing after nearly a decade.

The chef and best-selling author also put both branches of Barbecoa, his upmarket barbecue restaurant, up for sale.

Jamie, who has also experienced a spate of serious illnesses and deaths among family members and friends, credits his home life for helping him battle through all the emotional turmoil.

“It’s been rough. When it rains it pours,” he said. “I go home and see my kids and that always cheers me up,” he added, referring to his five children with his “massively helpful” wife of 18-years, Jools – Daisy, 16, Poppy, 15, Petal, nine, Buddy, eight, and River, 22 months.

“To go back home to a two-year-old asking for an apple is just utterly sweet. It works. It helps. When things get to me, kids are an amazing remedy.”